


Anahera

by SassyLassy



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, comfort fanfic time, mention of dead child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 15:45:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9909695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SassyLassy/pseuds/SassyLassy
Summary: Don't worry I'll get the missing day fic prompts done soon, this one just called out to be done first.Junkrat learns a lot more about Roadhog than he thought, and what's been eating away at him.





	

He had been seeing a change in Roadhog's behavior, even if he knew the other thought he hadn't. Junkrat was far more observant than people would give him credit for. After all, you don't survive an irradiated wasteland to grow up with dulled senses. If anything, he was hyper aware of what was going on around him at all times. Considering Roadhog was more or less around him twenty four seven, Junkrat had swiftly learned the moods and signals of his sometimes silent companion.

This morning he found the older man sitting by a burnt remains of what had once been a fairly impressive tree, staring out across the desert that stretched out in front of them. Junkrat frowned, setting his hands on his hips as he watched the back of Roadhog in silent contemplation.

His shoulders weren't their usual pulled back, confident selves. His head was lower. His breathing slower, too. Junkrat pursed his lips together before hopping forward, and landing with a grunt besides him on the large rock that Roadhog had decided to sit himself on.

"Alright mate," Junkrat said, "tell ole' Jamison what's eatin' ya. And before you go and tell me there ain't nothin' eating you, don't insult me mate. I got eyes in me head, still, and I put em to good use."

Roadhog, for lack of a better term, froze solid for a few moments. His breathing ceased entirely and Junkrat, for a horrifying moment, thought the old fart had finally kicked it. But when he moved, breathed, his own panic melted away like a snowflake in Uluru.

"...today's a bad day." Roadhog said, slowly.

"Why's that?"

He took another moments silence, a shuddering intake of breath as if breathing was suddenly very difficult for him. Roadhog turned his masked face away, a large hand squeezing down against his skull themed knee pad. "It's an anniversary I want to forget."

Junkrat frowned. Anniversary? "What? Whose anniversary? Yours?"

"In a way."

This blew Junkrat away. "You didn't tell me you was married..." He hadn't made any indication that he'd been with a woman before. True they hadn't been together that long, but keeping that kind of info from somebody wasn't really good was it? Roadhog wasn't Junkrat's first, and he knew well enough that Roadhog was an inherently sexy bloke and anyone with a brain in their head should be attracted to him, but the fact his bodyguard slash boyfriend hadn't informed him of something this momentous felt like a bit of a blow to the old ego.

"I wasn't." Roadhog says swiftly. "I. We never got married."

Junkrat pulled his knees to his chest, leaning forward and tilted his head so he could watch Roadhog's maskless face. "...so what anniversary are ya wantin' to forget?"

Again, Roadhog went quiet. Which wasn't too shocking, or out of character. He was a quiet man, the strong silent type, the guy who chose his words. But this silence was an uncomfortable one that made the air feel tense and uncomfortable. 

Finally he made noise again, a shifting of his weight against the rock. "The day my daughter died."

Junkrat felt as if he'd been king hit to the back of the head when those words filtered through that mask to his ears. Roadhog, his Roadhog, his Hoggy, had lost a kid. 

The outback was dangerous. It always had been, what with deadly poisonous animals that wanted you dead and spiders the size of your hand wanting to eat your eyelids. But after the Omnium explosion and the irradiation it had become worse. Disease, insanity, criminal activity, all of it had gone up and Junkertown was born of it. People died. Junkrat had seen that with his own eyes. Good, honest, smart people died out here.

And so did children.

He didn't know what to say. Sorry didn't seem like it carried enough weight and it felt useless. Like throwing water onto a raging inferno that had no stop in sight.

"Her name was Anahera." Roadhog continued without any coaxing. "She had brown eyes. Black hair. My nose. And she was my responsibility and..." he trailed into the uncomfortable silence, before swallowing thickly. "I can still remember her face. Her laugh."

"...how uh... how old..." Junkrat begun, but found himself unable to finish the question.

"Three." he answered for him. "But don't ask how old she'd be. I can't bring myself to count the years." Roadhog turned, his mask now looking in Junkrat's general direction. "Folk told me the pain would go away. I'll tell you one thing, rat. Those people are liars. The pain doesn't go. It never leaves. It might get smaller, but it never all out leaves. She's still here," Roadhog slammed his large hand against his chest. "She's still with me 'n I can't ever let her go and I don't want to and every year when it's her birthday or this fucking terrible date I can feel her harder than ever and it's. The pain is.. worse than anything I've felt."

Which was saying a lot. Junkrat knew what Roadhog had been through, physically. What kind of trauma, at least the physical kind, that his partner had endured. You don't live through the destruction of the omnium without injuries. His hidden face could attest to that. And all what came after. Surviving in that land he'd helped forge against his will and want, it wasn't easy. Junkrat was a result of that. Only twenty five and looked twice his age, and missing two limbs, and many people called him unhinged and broken in more ways than one.

Yet both had survived pain that came in many forms. Physical, mental, and emotional.

Junkrat, too, had suffered loss. He couldn't remember his parents, though he knew he'd had two fathers though their faces, and names, were lost to him. And the woman who'd dragged him up, taught him how to survive, she was gone too. She'd been a good person, a good Junker out in the middle of nowhere who'd taken pity on a filthy five year old alone in the wastes though she had no reason to. The radiation had eaten her and taken her from him when he'd been only eleven. And her face too, now, was growing foggy in his horrible memory addled mind. But he knew she had been there, been real.

Could that loss compare to Roadhog's though? A three year old... a little tyke of his own taken. How had it happened? Junkrat wanted to ask but he knew he would never ask that question of Roadhog. That was his pain to carry and he had no right to ask for it. 

He reached over suddenly and pressed his flesh hand to Roadhog's arm, squeezing. Junkrat inched closer, and pressed his forehead down against the same arm, shutting his eyes tightly. "I don't know what to say." He admitted, voice quiet. "Sorry don't feel right. But it's all I got."

Roadhog was quiet, but it was the comfortable kind of quiet that Junkrat was accustomed to. He moved, lifted his massive hand, and placed it onto the upper back of Junkrat and pressed itself gently as he could against his stained, warm skin. He sighed a heavy sigh, before suddenly bending downwards and pressed the nose of his mask to the top of Junkrat's head. There, he 'snuffled'. Snorting softly, and rubbing the leather against the younger man's head. A sign of affection that spoke volumes behind that mask of his.

"Thanks." He said, after a moment.

Junkrat smiled, pressing his face closer still against Roadhog's arm, no doubt getting it filthy from the constant layer of ash that seemed to cling to him. "Love ya, mate. Know I don't say it a lot, but I do."

"I know." Roadhog replied. "Same. Mean, I don't say it a lot." Once more a pause before another soft rub of that nose. "Love you, too."


End file.
